Wonder When You’ll Miss Me (21 page)

My mom stood behind him with her arms crossed.

I tried to yank myself back from Tony, but he had his arms under mine, his palms on my shoulders, his hands bleeding down my dress, pressing me firmly against him.

I sat up and banged my head.

Below me Wilma stirred, murmured something, then rolled over. I rubbed my tender forehead. Through the open windows I heard rain, a steady, thorough wash of rain. It was comforting, a soft blanket of noise, and soon, despite myself, I tumbled back into the dense embrace of sleep.

I
N
the morning I hiked through mud and made my way to the menagerie. Jim had left Bluebell and Olivia in the trucks all night to keep them dry. While we stood talking, they poked their trunks through the sliding vent doors, searching around like blind men feeling for a face.

“There are carrots in the cab,” Jim said. He was flipping through his road atlas, an exercise that had started as a means for finding a route, but had devolved into a tour of circus memories, guided by his wandering finger. “Jesus,” he called out as I fished around for the ten-pound bag of carrots. “I bloody remember Portland!”

I gave them each a carrot, then another, while Jim talked on and on about his first tour, his first elephant (“They're pregnant for a year and a half, you know”), how poorly he'd slept the night before (“Rain plagues me—I have such a fear of drowning”).

“Hey!” Jim said, and shook the atlas at me. “I meant to tell you: Elaine stopped by on her way to breakfast to ask me if I could spare you for teardown. Isn't that terrific?”

I nodded. The bag was empty. There were no more carrots. I began to unwind the hose and then I stopped. “Wait a minute. Why is that terrific? What does that mean?”

“That,” he said, “is her way of welcoming you.”

His meaning took a few seconds to sink in. Then relief made me giddy. They were mine; it was mine, all of it! The show was pulling out, and I would be going with it.

“One time in Cincinnati,” Jim said, “—I was on King Brothers then—
there was a kid who used to bring Olivia bagels every day and she loved him. Clever boy, maybe seven or eight years old—”

I could barely focus on what he was saying with all the joyful static in my head. I had a place to belong for at least the time being. I was Annabelle, a girl without a past, now a girl with a future. An elephant groom! I laughed out loud.

“—his name was. His parents were the wire act that season. What was their surname? Cabrini? Caputo? Something. Anyway, Olivia loved that little boy and he did something to upset his mum, I don't know what, but his mum was tearing him up and Olivia couldn't stand it. She was so upset. I knew something was wrong but I wasn't sure what it was, and then she pushed her way out—I didn't have her chained, mind you—pushed her way out into the stadium and grabbed that little boy with her trunk.”

The elephants stopped moving, as though they also listened.

“Everybody's screaming and carrying on, but she didn't want to hurt him, just protect him. She pulled him away from his mother and put him under her like a baby elephant, so she could stand over him. It was the sweetest thing I ever saw.”

Jim moved himself enough with this last story to scramble out of his chair, drop the atlas, and let the bulls out. Bluebell came first, then Olivia. Jim stood between them, alternately hugging each of them around the leg as they shifted in the mud. They touched his head with their trunks, one at a time.

I had hooked up the hose by now, but I dropped it and started to walk towards them. “Did you groom the horses yet?” Jim called, leaning his whole body into Bluebell's side and absently stroking her huge floppy ear.

I shook my head, but he wasn't watching. “No,” I said.

“Right-o,” he said without so much as a glance my way. I watched them stand in their cluster, a large family with only three members. Didn't I belong at least a little bit now?

I turned and made my way around to the horses. As I came to the horse trailer that marked the edge of their paddock, I heard agitated voices and then saw that Benny and Wilma were there. Benny stood to one side of Billy with his arms crossed while Wilma tried to coax the mare into a red-and-yellow headpiece with an enormous feathered plume. Billy tossed her head and gave a snort.

“It's too long,” Benny said. He pointed to a piece that came to a point between Billy's nostrils.

“No, it's supposed to look like that—”

“She'll never stand for it.”

“Benny, you have to give it a chance. She just has to get used to it.”

“She doesn't have to get used to anything,” he said, and ripped the headpiece off Billy, who whinnied to be free. Benny tossed it aside and a cascade of feathers tumbled off of the headpiece. Wilma looked like she'd been slapped. She gathered it all together and dumped it in a nearby carton.

“You're just a tired old man who's afraid of change,” she said in a low voice that sounded close to tears. She picked up the box and turned, pushing past me in the direction of our trailer.

I stood awkwardly for a minute while Benny, his back to me, whispered to the horses and stroked their heads. I backed away quietly to walk the circumference of the grounds, to give Benny a moment to forget I'd been there, to give myself a moment alone.

I was signing on to all of this. To conflicts and allegiances I didn't know or understand. To a totally foreign world with its own rules that I had to learn, and fast.

Still, shit-shoveling or not, I couldn't imagine not going. What would I do instead? Go back to Gleryton and turn myself in?

No. No, I wasn't going to do that.

I passed the Genershes' trailer, which was quiet, and walked towards Amos Ruble,
Tallest Living Man in the Entire Universe!
He sat on a lawn chair in front of his trailer, whittling something, his long legs splayed before him like two fallen trees. As I passed, he lifted an arm to wave and I blushed and waved back. A few minutes later, when I came to Germania Loudon's trailer, I stopped. I was a few feet away, but from the back it looked like any other trailer.

“What do you think you're doing?” The fat girl stood there with a bag of chips. “Wanna go gawk at the fat lady, huh?”

I whirled around and stomped off.

“Don't forget your roots, honey!” she called after me. “There but for the grace of God…”

 

We loaded out that evening after the show. It took everyone doing his or her part and almost six hours to break the whole show down and pack it away. Labor united everyone except Sam, who seemed stressed out just carrying his clipboard and supervising.

I did my best to stay out of his way and avoid his gaze while simulta
neously ignoring the fat girl, who trailed me, a lamb chop in one paw and a napkin in the other, prattling on about nothing. “Isn't this impressive,” she kept saying. “Wow, will you look at that!”

I recognized lots of the job-ins from my yellow-flag meal. A posse of swarthy men who kept laughing among themselves were the fastest with the tent. I obeyed all instructions, but wasn't very good at most of the duties I was given and was soon told to go help Wilma. By then some of the performers had gone. Jim and Benny and the others with animal trucks had left first thing after the show because they were worried about weigh stations.

Wilma was almost done securing everything in the trailer by the time I got there. Her hair was pulled back in tiny black pigtails and she had an orange bandanna tied like a kerchief on her head. I blinked. She wore tight blue hot pants, a baseball T-shirt, and a small red golf jacket with her ever-present combat boots. It was the first time I'd ever seen her in anything but dresses and poodle skirts.

“My traveling garb,” she said when I stood there staring.

I had changed after the show, but hadn't showered, so Wilma suggested I might
take this opportunity.
By the time I was done we were ready to go.

“Did your family leave already?” I asked, rubbing a towel through my hair. Wilma's mouth was pressed in a thin line and she stopped what she was doing for a second before she nodded. She looked like she might cry, but instead gave me a once-over and asked if I knew how to drive stick.

I considered lying, but thought better of it. The truth was that I had turned sixteen at Berrybrook and still hadn't gotten a license. “No,” I said, and took a deep breath. “Actually, I don't know how to drive at all.”

That did it. Wilma's face crumpled and she sank onto one of the trunks and sobbed. I didn't know what to do. I stood awkwardly for a minute, shifting back and forth, and then I went and sat next to her on the trunk, putting an arm around her shoulders and pulling her towards me. “It's okay,” I murmured, though I wasn't sure it actually was. “It's okay.”

She calmed down after a few minutes, hiccuped several times, then took a deep breath and slapped both palms on her thighs. “Well,” she said firmly. “That's enough of that.”

She dried her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket, and slammed out the door to get a pickup truck that had spent the better part of a week in the corner of the parking lot but would now haul us to the next town. When the door closed behind her it was very quiet. In the distance I heard the
clanging and banging of the tent coming down, of people calling to one another, but inside the trailer nothing moved. The dresses had been tied back, the racks secured. Boards held the wigs in place and ropes held the trunks. The little table had been folded to the wall and the chairs were bungee-corded to its underside.

Even our pillows were secure.

But some things were missing, loose in the world. I walked over and sat on Wilma's bed. I listened for the fat girl, for the sound of chewing and swallowing, anything, but all I heard was the disassembly that came from outside.

Then I heard the truck. Wilma poked her head in and asked me to come outside so she could show me how to hitch up. I gave one last look around and followed her.

Soon we were ready to go. The truck was battered and blue, with an extra cab and a broken tape deck. “You're navigating,” Wilma told me. “So you have to stay awake too. You're going to look for the arrows.”

“What arrows?”

She strained to be patient. “There are arrows. We're going to follow them. The advance team laid them out. We'll stop on our way out and get coffee, something to eat.”

That sounded wonderful. It was almost 1
A.M
. and I was hungry. We climbed into the cab and closed our doors and Wilma shut her eyes before starting the engine. I saw her lips move and wondered if she was praying, and if so, what she asked for. Forgiveness? Guidance? The engine to turn over? I braced myself for scripture, but she just told me to put on my seat belt and pulled us around in a wide circle down the hill and through the campgrounds.

Most of the trailers we passed had their lights off. Many were hitched up to trucks of various sizes and shapes holding families preparing to go. The animal trucks were long gone. The midway had disappeared. By the time we pulled entirely around, the big top had dissolved into piles of things with men scrambling around them.

We drove towards the remnants of the tent and it looked more like preparation than dismemberment, the beginnings of something instead of the end. Everyone stopped what he or she was doing and waved to us, even Sam. My throat caught and I waved back, my grin nearly splitting my face apart. I felt connected, a part of the show, our truck and its contents the tissue of a larger muscle. I kept my face to the glass, so Wilma wouldn't see the tears that had sprung to my eyes, and watched it all until
it was a spot in the distance that disappeared when we rounded the next bend.

And then we left it all behind and headed for the open road.

 

Soon there was nothing in the world besides us and the truck cab, the trailer and night and the dark stretch of highway. The tape deck didn't work, despite Wilma's fervent efforts to bring it back to life. “You just have to hit it,” she kept saying, and pounding, until I worried that we were swerving and suggested maybe the tape deck just needed a little time to get used to moving again.

Wilma gave me an odd look, but stopped her banging and instead pointed to my side of the dashboard and instructed me to get a map. This was easier asked than accomplished. When I opened the glove compartment, an enormous pile of stuff tumbled into my lap and onto the floor. There were cigarettes and tampons, a pint of whiskey, a flashlight, one black leather glove with the fingers cut off, a wrench, a rag, a bandanna, part of a wax bag full of what looked like it had once been licorice, about thirty different keys, some nails, thumbtacks and safety pins, and a pack of condoms (French tickler, still in the box, which I quickly stuffed back into the glove compartment). At the bottom of it all, soft as a dishtowel, there was a faded, ratty map of the country.

“Who is the advance team?” I asked, as we spotted the first arrow telling us to take the on ramp to the highway. “Have I met them?”

“The twenty-four-hour man?” she said. “No. Used to be one guy who would ride ahead and book a place and arrange for all the advertising and everything. You know, take down the posters of whatever other show was coming to town, and hang up his own. Our advance team is a guy named Lou and his wife. He'll park us when we get there. I think she's always sleeping when we pull in. I've only met her a few times. Beginning-of-season picnics and stuff. You know, the Christmas party.”

She snorted. “We used to have them—Christmas parties, I mean—before Elaine got this harebrained idea to tour all year. We used to close down after November and not start up until May, like everyone else. But it hasn't been like that since I was a kid.”

 

We found a truck stop and pulled in to eat and fuel up. It had only been a week since I'd been in one, but somehow arriving with Wilma and our
trailer—as a part of something instead of as a hitchhiker—the truck stop looked foreign. We walked through the trucker store first, admiring the boots and T-shirts, the strange selection of tapes, the water bottles and cowboy hats. They had one like the hat I'd been wearing when I arrived at Fartlesworth and Wilma put it on.

“Looks cute,” I told her, but she shook her head and put it back on the rack. I wondered where mine was. In the trailer? I hadn't seen it in a while. I picked up the hat and put it on. Wilma was looking at key chains.